Symposium
by Cap'n Pirate Monkey
Summary: Ocelot arrives in Zanzibarland just a little too late to save Big Boss from himself. Of course, that's not about to stop him...Ocelot/BB


_And if there were only some way of contriving that a state or an army should be made up of lovers and their beloved...when fighting at each other's side, although a mere handful, they would overcome the world. For what lover would not choose rather to be seen by all mankind than by his beloved, either when abandoning his post or throwing away his arms? He would be ready to die a thousand deaths rather than endure this. Or who would desert his beloved or fail him in the hour of danger?_

_Plato, 'Symposium'_

So this was Zanzibarland.

If he had not known better, Ocelot might have assumed that John had chosen this throwaway scrap of land for its geographical proximity to Tselinoyarsk-that-was. Indeed, this northernmost point seemed to be an unconscious homage to that confused land, a frustrated collage of parchment-yellow rock and thick forest and fortress, the fractured spine of a dead country. It was the ghost of Groznyj Grad, recurring like an old trauma.

When they had told him John had gone mad, he had laughed it off. It was a weakness on his part; the steadfast refusal to accept flaw or fault unless it was empirical, and even then, it could not truly be a fault but an eccentricity. That was not to say John was perfect. It was just that he seemed static, unchanging, all the minutiae of his personality set firmly in stone. And so he had dismissed each small proof of his madness as quirks, comparable to his fear of vampires, or enthusiastic consumption of anything even vaguely edible. The tonnes of imported Japanese sand must have been part of some strange and elaborate joke. The "poisonous hamsters" were a myth concocted to deter intruders. It could all be explained. There was no reason to be concerned.

And yet...bathed in the cold sunlight, the silence so heavy it was almost physical, this strange place seemed monument to an insanity in excess of even Volgin's best offering.

He was not dead. That much Ocelot knew. It had long been his belief that he would feel John's death as something physical, like the loss of a limb, or the forcible amputation of something vital, without which he would surely die. It was a romantic notion, and one that he would not deign to share; even in his own head it sounded foolish. John was not dead, and the certainty of it troubled Ocelot; if he was not dead, and quite clearly not here, then where was he?

"Don't look so mournful."

The proclamation hadn't quite taken him by surprise. The idiot offspring John had never wanted, a man possessed of some strange notions about appropriate combat attire and an affected public schoolboy accent. And they had the nerve to call John eccentric.

"The man was an arse," Liquid said, in a tone of voice that might have been better suited to the airy dismissal of a particularly low quality theatre production. "Look at this place. What kind of fool sticks a fortress between four nations and expects to get out alive? He was a lunatic. It's no great loss."

The mental image of Liquid tumbling poodle-perm over feet down the cliff was a sufficient substitute for the real thing.

"Lunacy is often genetic," Ocelot said.

Liquid shrugged. His expression was unreadable, hidden behind sunglasses that looked ostentatiously expensive, and were therefore almost certainly not.

"Judging by what happened here," he said, indicating the compound with a grandiose sweep of his arm (so unlike his father, whose dramatic flair began and ended in battle and even then, was nothing more than a skill so rare it appeared theatrical to the untrained eye) "The other one inherited that particular trait."

Unbidden, a small smirk played at the corners of Ocelot's mouth.

"And in any case," Liquid continued, "I intend to do things differently."

Ah. The magic words, uttered by so many men and always proved resolutely false when it came down to it. Whether born of arrogance or naivety, the idea that one could sidestep the mistakes and errors made by better men than themselves – well, it was laughable.

Behind Liquid, another man had appeared, seemingly born of thin air. He was dressed all in black, a cumbersome gas mask strapped to a skull that seemed made of paper. And christ, he was floating, spidery limbs suspended as if from gossamer, a grey shadow pooled where his feet ought to be.

Another clear indicator of Liquid's own madness. He seemed intent on peopling FOXHOUND with freaks, turning it into a second-rate Cobra Unit comprised of shamans and mind-benders and mimics. Ocelot was the exception, of course, having offered his services as a gesture of goodwill. What better way to lure vermin out into the open than to play at being distracted?

Liquid disappeared over the crest of the hill, having apparently tired of Ocelot's company. Ocelot thought it was one of life's small mercies that he had not been born personable.

If Liquid had been right about one thing – one single, solitary thing – it was that Ocelot had no reason to be mournful. This fuddled mess of a country was not to be John's tomb, or indeed anything else, gathering metaphorical dust under an indifferent sky. But shit, he should have been here. He should have been with him. He had come as soon as he'd heard, but it had been too late; ironic, for a man who had made a living of being in the right place, at the right time, to show up so long after everything had gone to hell.

They had always recognised each other's autonomy, he and John, and acknowledged the necessity of their individual pursuits. Still, the times they had fought together were among his fondest memories (interwoven with snippets seemingly chosen at random; a bonfire of Volgin's personal effects, sending a plume of acrid black smoke into the sky, thick like a child's crayon-scrawl. Cold nights in Tikhogorynj, drinking smuggled vodka with Vasily Baranov and Pyotr Milyutin, exchanging lewd stories and tales of improbable bravery)

Ocelot felt a crawling sensation at the base of his skull. Cold, thin fingers dancing a stilted gavotte just beneath the bone.

"Regret."

That voice, like a dry desert wind.

"I wish you'd knock first," Ocelot said irritably.

"Forgive me," Mantis said. "Melancholia has such a distinctive flavour."

It did not repulse him, exactly – christ, Volgin had been worse – but he could barely be called a man, this strange arrangement of bone and wire-taut sinew and skin so pale he might actually have been blue. The undulation of his ribcage and the harsh jut of his hipbones seemed to constitute all that was solid about him. He could quite easily have been a

_ghost_

shadow, cast against the blue sky and pallid mountainside.

"No need for concern," Mantis said. "I'm very discreet."

"I don't know what you're talking about," Ocelot said, and knew that Mantis would taste the lie, as sure as he himself could taste it. It was not the most elegant of untruths. And when Mantis dove into his mind, clearing a path through thickets of synapses and capillaries and nerves, it occurred to him that perhaps the truth would have been a great deal less embarrassing.

_You know, Adamska. You know very well._

_Shall I show you?_

[...forest and river and the glint of a sniper's sight somewhere in the distance, he had seen it a split second before John and in the time it took for him to push John to the ground, the bastard shot. The bullet missed his own skull by a hair's breadth, hit the trunk of a tree with a burst of bark and pulp. John had stared at him as if he were a madman, this stray soldier, a man whose lone allegiance was to him, unafraid of such trivial things as bullets...]

[...wound around him like an affectionate kitten, studying with languid interest the disparity in their skin, their bone structure, the small differences that made them who they were. A tangle of limbs and sheets and rapid heartbeats, the breathlessness of exertion slowing into a rhythm. "I'm going with you," he had said, in a tone that invited no debate. In the still heat of afternoon, with warm sunlight streaming through the blinds casting them both in pale gold, there was no objection on earth that might have dissuaded him, and, he sensed, none forthcoming...]

[...great deal more useful to you as an ally." His hands open, palms facing upwards, naked without his gloves (fingers like a pianist, long and elegant and balletic) To his credit, John had never looked sceptical, and even when he crossed his arms and fixed him with a cold-eyed stare (and he had thoroughly earned it; his easy arrogance and smirking bravado were tempered only by the undeniable fact that he was right) and said "how can I trust you?" The answer to that had been so beautifully simple that he must have anticipated it, the hands that drew his face closer, the press of teeth and tongue and sharp hipbones...]

[...John's expression, quizzical, uncomprehending. "Don't you ever wonder where'll you be in ten years time?" and the response, whiplash-quick and every bit as sharp – "Who gives a fuck?" (for a the briefest of moments John had almost looked hurt by it, almost, but Adamska was twenty six and therefore considered himself immortal; time had not yet begun to nip at his heels) "I already know what's going to happen."

An eyebrow quirked. "Oh yeah?"

He smiled indulgently. "You and me. We'll grow old together. A couple of rusted old tanks, put out to pasture. We'll sit in the sun and talk about when we were young men."

Behind them, in the courtyard, the phlegmatic rattle of AK-47 fire heralded the start of another firefight.

"I'll die before you," Ocelot said, with the unpractised neutrality of a completely spontaneous statement, one that had not paused for thought on its way from brain to larynx to tongue, and before John had even opened his mouth to challenge him...]

_You said you would not let it happen any other way. That you would not allow it. _

_Do you understand now, Adamska?_

Mantis withdrew from Ocelot's subconscious, his presence yanked sharply away like a rug from beneath a sleeping cat. Ocelot staggered; the last traces of Mantis's control rattled in the blank space between skull and grey matter, bouncing like a pinball. It was, he thought, like the dying vestiges of a hangover.

"If you ever do that again," Ocelot said, "I will feed you your own gas mask. Understand?"

"It was necessary." Either this ragged marionette of a man was incapable of conveying emotion, or he was extremely good at hiding it. "But if you prefer your apologies in a more tangible form, let me tell you this: the man you call John is not dead. But neither is he alive, in any conventional sense."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"You know where he is," Mantis said. "I saw it in the very depths of your subconscious. You know who's responsible."

It wasn't a suspicion so much as desperation, a need to blame someone for this whole sad affair. And of course, it had to be them. It was always them. Their collective lunacy was beyond anything John might have dreamed up. They would keep him alive because he was useless to them dead.

It hadn't been a promise, all those years ago, in that courtyard where gunfire and the echoless crash of explosives were interrupted only by the khamsin, sending yellowish flurries of sand spiralling through the streets. It hadn't been a promise because he had known, as sure as he knew he had been born and would someday die, that John would not die as long as Ocelot breathed. Call it a premonition, a portent, or perhaps just the mulish certainty of one who had loved deeply and unwaveringly.

[..."Don't put yourself in danger for my sake," John said. As the sandstorm reached a howling crescendo they retreated further into their hide, little more than a rigid construct of old iron and canvas. Their bodies fit neatly against one another, hips and elbows and legs linked in a companionable tangle.

"Why not?" Ocelot replied. "You'd do it for me." The silence that followed and the small smile, little more than a twitch of the jaw but familiar to Ocelot as the contours of his own revolver, was the closest he would get to confirmation.]

Neither alive nor dead.

It would have to do.

"I'm a man of my word, John," he said, and hoped that by some arcane process, some strange form of psychic osmosis that John would hear him, understand him, know that he would come for him.

[..."how can I trust you?" John had asked, and in the aftermath, breathing in shallow gasps through parted lips (stained pink with blood that was not his) Ocelot had finally seen fit to reply.

"I would give my life for you," he had said, and although he was a consummate liar, had remorselessly built a career on the shattered fragments of other people's trust and fully intended to build higher, this time he meant every syllable.]


End file.
